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INTERVIEW: Iain Banks

Iain Banks is a best selling novelist.

What was the first step you took towards achieving your dream?
Iain Banks: Starting to write, I guess. Specifically, starting to write with the intention of keeping on trying until I succeeded (or until it became obvious even to somebody as stubborn as me that it wasn't going to work). In the end all it took was a million words, six novels and fourteen years, and there I was, an overnight success.

When did you know you were well on the way to achieving your dream?
Iain Banks: When one of my best pals read the manuscript of The Wasp Factory and said it was just like reading a real book. I felt slightly insulted until I realised it was precisely the reaction I ought to be looking for.

How did you know you'd achieved your dream?
Iain Banks: When James Hale, the head of fiction at the big London publishers where I'd left my book a week or so earlier, rang me up at my day job and said he wanted to publish The Wasp Factory.